Quote collection
156 quotes — follow a thought to its full quote page.
"One must be rich in thought and character to owe nothing to books, though preparation is necessary to profitable reading; and the less reading is better than more;--book-struck men are of all readers least wise, however knowing or learned."
"My favorite books have a personality and complexion as distinctly drawn as if the author's portrait were framed into the paragraphs and smiled upon me as I read his illustrated pages."
"Civilization degrades many in order to exalt the few."
"A good book is fruitful of other books; it perpetuates its fame from age to age, and makes eras in the lives of its readers."
"An age deficient in idealism has ever been one of immorality and superficial attainment, since without the sense of ideas, nobility of character becomes of rare attainment, if possible."
"Modesty, that perennial flower planted instinctively in the human breast, blooms therein only as continence guards and virtue keeps."
"Friendship is a plant that loves the sun, thrives ill under clouds."
"Labor humanizes, exalts."
"Of gifts, there seems none more becoming to offer a friend than a beautiful book."
"Evil is retributive: every trespass slips fetters on the will, holds the soul in durance till contrition and repentance restore it to liberty."
"Our favorites are few; since only what rises from the heart reaches it, being caught and carried on the tongues of men wheresoever love and letters journey."
"The fable runs that the gods mix our pains and pleasure in one cup, and thus mingle for us the adulterate immortality which we alone are permitted here to enjoy. Voluptuous raptures, could we prolong these at pleasure, would dissipate and dissolve us. A sip is the most that mortals are permitted from any goblet of delight."
"Conversation is an abandonment to ideas, a surrender to persons."
"Sympathy wanting, all is wanting; its personal magnetism is the conductor of the sacred spark that lights our atoms, puts us m human communion, and gives us to company, conversation, and ourselves."
"Pleasure, that immortal essence, the beauteous bead sparkling in the cup, effervesces soon and subsides."
"Science has grown frightfully audacious in these days -- swift-footed, ponderous, careering over her iron ways with unslacking pace. This rampant dragon, on which I am mounted, see how he bends his once stiff neck to his rider, champing his checked bit and pawing the dust, impatient to leap around the globe. Genius is prescient, foresees its own might. Man is striving through these iron-ribbed, steam-sped hippogriffs, to recover his lost ubiquity and omnipotence, and threatens soon to grasp in his ample palm, and fix with flaming eye-ball, the elemental forces!"
"Ideas first and last: yet it is not till these are formulated and utilized that the devotees of the common sense discern their value and advantages. The idealist is the capitalist on whose resources multitudes are maintained life long. Ideas in the head set hands about their several tasks, thus carrying forward all human endeavors to their issues."
"One must be rich in thought and character to owe nothing to books."
"The history of religions, of which Christianity is a transcendent element, awaits the deepest study. It requires Bibles to free from Bibles. Comparative theology is the best of studies for liberating one's mind from geographical and traditional limitations. Like travelling, it shows the globe in its varying climates and zones, its latitude and longitude of intelligence. When the races shall have learned each other's language, the significance of things to thoughts, one faith becomes universal, one brotherhood."
"The books that charmed us in youth recall the delight ever afterwards; we are hardly persuaded there are any like them, any deserving our equal affections."